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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Summer Fun Writing Prompt

By Lizzie Vance and Marilyn Friedman

Now that the month of June is here (and the warm weather is being coy), it's time to switch gears and go on our summer adventures--even if it's only on the page. We have a lot of fun activities planned for June and July including an Adult Summer Camp with award-winning novelist and short story writer Maureen McHugh and Emmy-award nominated screenwriters Victor Levin and Michael Saltzman! Reserve your spot before our camp and other classes are full by clicking on the links below or emailing marilyn@writingpad.com.

*Classes with an asterix will be held at our Westside location in Culver City!

Writing Prompt: Here's a writing prompt to get you summ-imagination going! Make a list of your 3 most memorable moments from the summers of your childhood (e.g. that costume contest you won by wearing your Wonder Woman Underoos to camp, your first kiss at sleep away camp, a backpacking trip with your family to Yosemite where you almost died). Pick one. Add a sensory detail to it (e.g. smell, taste, sound, touch). Now write for 10 minutes and post the results in the comments of this blog to be entered into the contest for a free class at Writing Pad!

Happy summer, everyone!

Write about a summer camp or vacation memory from your childhood. Post your 10 minute write in the comments of this blog, and
you could win a free class!

4 comments:

Jesse N.
said...

They gave us freetime between dinner and Campwide Share at Camp Kinderland. It was a camp started by Jewish socialists in the 1920s. Now they call it “A Summer Camp with a Conscience.” It’s a quite a tagline, but what I remember most from the 8 glorious years I spent as both a camper and counselor there was that hour at dusk when we were free to roam around and do as we pleased.

The other hours in the day were all scheduled: breakfast, clean up with the chore wheel, morning swim, sports, Arts & Crafts, Culture, lunch, rest hour, theater, cloud gazing, afternoon swim, music, dance, dinner, share, evening activity. For every hour there was an activity, we were never bored. Which made that hour after dinner that was all ours that much sweeter.

We would run back to get our sweatshirts and lather ourselves in bug spray so as not to waste one precious moment. The bunk would smell of Herbal Essences shampoo, sunscreen, musty wood from cabin walls not meant to withstand rains, and the sweet hormonal body odor of preteen girls. We would meet whatever boys we were sharing this freetime with on the front porch of our bunk (Pablo Neruda, Chana Senesh, Anne Frank, each were named after someone. We were in Pablo for 3 glorious years), or we would do a girls-only hour and sit in the grass of the field by the flagpole, talking about the missing girls, and how much we loved each other, and what would we do when we had to go home until next summer when we could be together again.

If we grabbed a few boys we would go out to the swings, hidden just beyond a veil of trees, the kids names who helped construct them burned with a woodburning tool into the side of the structure. We would swing and tease and talk about the missing boys, and who we thought was cutest, and what we though it would be like next summer, when we were in different bunks and would have been through a semester of high school.

Or we would go make a phone call at the office, a tiny house with two public phones and some benches made from split logs. We would call home if it was our one night a week we promised a call, or call a friend who wrote us a letter saying they missed us. Or call a grandmother once a summer. And to everyone we would say camp is amazing. It’s hard to explain. You really could only understand it if you came here.